Memories of a CL4P-TRP Unit
by TT124
Summary: As he gets an upgrade, Claptrap takes a trip down memory lane.


It'd been a week since Maya, Zer0, and Gaige had left for Moneta, and they were due to arrive that day. Lilith had sent Maya and Zer0 because apparently it was a matter that required "subtlety" and "not shooting up every room they walked into". Gaige had gone because there was supposed to be robots.

Apparently Hyperion had their Archives there. Essentially a version of the Info Stockade multiplied by 1000 in size and content, it held every scrap of data that had ever passed through Hyperion hands, or through the hands of any Hyperion customer. Naturally, it had to be destroyed- even after his death, people were trying their hardest to follow in Jack's footsteps. If this was a place that held every detail of Jack's life, then it was bad news. Plus, if there was any information on other Vaults Hyperion may have uncovered, the leads would be good to have.

When they came back, though, they hadn't found much of that. They'd wiped every trace of Jack clean from the place as they could, but they hadn't found anything they didn't already know. As for other Vaults, Hyperion had nothing. If anything, they were doing their best to stay away from anything remotely Eridian, considering their former CEO got killed (not to mention spent billions on a failed venture) over it. Aside from some middle-manager getting scammed over a fake Vault Key or something or other, they were looking the other way.

What _had_ been found, however, was a few data files tucked away by Jack. A project he'd worked on for some time immediately before Dahl's Lost Legion attacked Helios. Claptrap had been following them around ever since they got back, but they'd locked themselves in the command center and wouldn't tell him anything about it. Still, he could hear a little bit from the street below, the downside to having an open-air war room. There was a lot of annoyed groaning from Lilith, Maya saying something about how they "needed everyone they could get", Gaige promising that she could "make it work." There was a period of silence, before Gaige leaned over the balcony and looked down at Claptrap.

"Oh! Uh, uh," Claptrap panicked, glancing to the seemingly indifferent door guards, before shutting himself into his 'locked' mode, arms, wheel, and eye receding into his chassis as he shook.

"Hey, Claptrap, come on up here for a second, would'ja?" Claptrap continued to shake. "Uh… Clap?" Shake. Gaige motioned to one of the doormen. "Could you, uh, maybe…?" The doorman nodded, picking Claptrap up. A short flight up the stairs (during which Claptrap may have been 'accidentally' dropped once or twice) and the guard dropped the little robot unceremoniously on the table, where he unfolded in the shock. Claptrap dusted himself off while the guard silently left the room, only to suddenly realize he had been moved. Around the table, two Sirens, one cyborg, and one assassin of indeterminate origin stood looking expectantly at him.

"Oh, hey guys!" Claptrap wheeled himself to a standing position on the holo-display table. "I was just, uuuuuuuuuuuh…"

"So how much of that did you hear?" Lilith interrupted, arms crossed.

"Pretty much nothing!" Claptrap said quickly, "Virtually nothing! You sure sounded annoyed a lot, but that's not that weird, so—"

"You are aware of our… excursion, to Moneta, correct?" Maya asked. The blue haired woman was looking at him like she always did- not harshly, but looking a lot like she wanted to be somewhere else. Claptrap liked to think that it wasn't just because of him.

"The one to find the Hyperion Data Archives and get as much info as we good before destroying the place?" Gaige reminded him. Gaige was one of the few people in town who didn't outright regard Claptrap with annoyance, especially since Athena had shared the story about Elpis. Again, Claptrap hoped that had more to do with his personality, and less of the roboticist wanting to open him up to see all the mods he'd had over the years.

"Yeah, you, uh, might have mentioned it at some point. What does that have to do with—"

"How much do you remember of the events on Elpis?" Claptrap frowned. As much as he could without a proper face anyway, which ended up as a sort of slouch. He didn't like thinking about that time, the things he'd done under Jack's orders. Even worse, he didn't like thinking about how Jack had left him for dead after it was all over…

"Not a whole lot… I remember some of the beginning parts, and the end…" and here he went quiet for a second again, "but not a whole lot in between."

"How'd you like to change that?" Gaige asked.

"What?"

"Data from our trip," Zer0 finally spoke, "Events from your perspective. A sort of… 'black box'." And Gaige held up a little storage deck, with the text "FR4G-TRP COMBAT DATA" printed on the front.

"It's got all the memories from your trip on it," she explained. "Combat data, memories of everything that happened… even a bit of the old programming." Clatrap looked to her in shock, as she added, "You could be a Vault Hunter again." In an uncharacteristic move, Claptrap was completely silent as she explained, and only looked up and spoke after a few moments of introspection.

"You mean… I'd be out there, with you guys, fighting for make life and barely escaping death?"

"The thrill of combat," Zer0 nodded.

"I… the first time Jack installed that, it wiped my entire memory bank."

"I can do way better than Jack ever could," Gaige assured him. "Probably."

"Not to mention the horrible, soul crushing guilt and depression of the horrible things I did up there. All those innocent people who died, the horrible ways we tore up the moon, all of it!"

"…You'd be able to climb stairs again?" Maya offered.

"Well, I'm sold!" Claptrap rubbed his hands together, making a soft metallic scraping sound. "So how're we doing this? Satellite uplink? Direct circuit-board integration? Maybe you buy me dinner first, if we're going to get that int-int-int-int," and Claptrap shuddered and fell over, silent, Gaige having plugged the storage deck into his interface immediately after he accepted the deal. The group stood around the table, watching the bot twitch every so often, sparks flying out of his metal frame.

"You sure this is a good idea?" Lilith asked them.

"Hey, we need every Vault Hunter we can get, right?" Gaige asked. And as the little robot was lying on the table, he began to, most unusually for a robot, _dream_….


End file.
